* Remembering Jonathan Tucker, a humble giant of biological and chemical weapons control

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Jonathan Tucker

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Remembering a humble giant of biological and chemical weapons control
BY PAUL F. WALKER | 4 AUGUST 2011
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/remembering-humble-giant-of-biological-and-chemical-weapons-control

“Jonathan was perfectly described by his close friend and fellow Yale graduate, Jonathan Winer, who said, “One thing important about Jonathan beyond reciting his wide-ranging academic, literary, and public policy achievements is a recognition of his importance to the community overall, because of his commitment to the truth, scrupulous approach to fact and information, and rigorous standard for making judgments.”

His intellectual and academic vigor, together with his journalistic instincts, were also stimulated by the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington and elsewhere; he was skeptical of the FBI’s pursuit of both Steven Hatfill and Bruce Ivins as lone culprits. Hatfill was eventually found innocent and won a lawsuit against the FBI; a recent National Academy of Sciences analysis of the FBI probe has raised serious doubts about Ivins’s guilt. Finding Ivins’s case to be circumstantial and too thin to base firm judgments on, Jonathan wanted more evidence to reach a conclusion about what really took place. In fact, before his death Jonathan was considering writing a book on the anthrax affair. “